


behind the walls

by ShowMeAHero



Category: DC Extended Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Resurrection, Smut, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23564620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: It happens so quickly that, in Bruce’s memory, it’s just a series of images.Watching whatever thefuckthe thing hurtling towards Earth was. Trying to cover Diana to protect her against the inevitable. Turning to look at Clark’s face. Seeing that he wasn’t looking back; seeing that he was staring up at the sky, too, and starting to rise. Watching Clark finally turn to look at him, too.This moment he sees on a loop, like a video that’s stuck on a short-circuit or a record that can’t stop skipping the same note: Clark, his face crumpling completely, before he visibly steels himself and mouths,I’m sorry.
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 30
Kudos: 319





	behind the walls

It happens so quickly that, in Bruce’s memory, it’s just a series of images.

Watching whatever the  _ fuck  _ the thing hurtling towards Earth was. Trying to cover Diana to protect her against the inevitable. Turning to look at Clark’s face. Seeing that he wasn’t looking back; seeing that he was staring up at the sky, too, and starting to rise. Watching Clark finally turn to look at him, too.

This moment he sees on a loop, like a video that’s stuck on a short-circuit or a record that can’t stop skipping the same note: Clark, his face crumpling completely, before he visibly steels himself and mouths,  _ I’m sorry. _

There’s no time to understand. There’s only time to know what the words  _ I’m sorry  _ mean in the English language before Clark is up and off, and then he’s  _ gone,  _ disappearing in a flash of light less than a mile above their heads.

And then there’s silence.

Bruce stares upwards without moving; Diana has to pry his hands off of her to get out of his grip and to climb out from under him in the hole he’d hidden her in. She asks, “Where’s Clark?” and Bruce doesn’t move.

He can hear the swish of air as Barry stops next to them. He’s got a kid clutched in his arms, and that’s the only thing that makes Bruce move. There’s a flash of red down the boy’s face, but he’s quiet and alert and awake; when Bruce moves to push the boy’s dark hair aside and examine his forehead through the blood, there’s no wound. The blood isn’t his.

“I don’t see a body,” Arthur says. His voice is like a low, humming frequency, to Bruce; it’s not words. It’s just noise.

“Batman,” Diana says. It takes him a moment to realize that configuration of letters in that exact order is supposed to be getting his attention, but he still doesn’t move. For a long, long while, he just stares down at the boy. The boy stares back at him, all wide blue eyes.

The child blinks. Bruce moves, a  _ swish  _ of night-black and Kevlar and the whistle of wire and he’s  _ gone,  _ taking off for the closest rooftop as fast as he can get up there.

He hurtles across the rooftops like a fucking animal. He stays to the shadows, because it’s habit; he doesn’t even think about his path until he’s at Clark’s apartment, and from there he needs to force himself to go home, to go back to Wayne Manor and the Batcave and Alfred, to explain what happened.

He doesn’t know what happened.

Without the Batmobile, it takes a while to get back to the Manor, but he doesn’t really notice. It’s fully nighttime by the time he gets there, the sky completely dark as he tumbles through the back entrance to the Batcave into the elevator down.

His hands enter sequences and scan his fingerprints and pull his eyelids down for his eyes to be scanned without a thought. Just instinct. Just moving because he knows he’s supposed to move.

By the time he’s in the Batcave, he doesn’t remember what to do anymore. He yanks off the cowl just so he can see better, and it’s then that Alfred comes around the corner. The two of them make hard,  _ hard  _ eye contact. Bruce can see that Alfred’s face is already red, his eyes already bloodshot.

“Diana called,” Alfred says. No  _ Miss Prince,  _ no  _ Wonder Woman.  _ No  _ What happened?,  _ no  _ Where is he?  _ or  _ Is Clark okay?  _ or even  _ What did you do? _ . Just,  _ Diana called. _

Bruce still doesn’t speak. He doesn’t know what to say. There’s no fucking rulebook for what the first thing you’re supposed to say is after the love of your short, stupid motherfucking life is wiped off the face of the fucking  _ Earth  _ in front of you.

Instead of speaking, Bruce just nods. He lets his cowl slip from his fingers before his knees hit the ground. Alfred’s hand touches his face in the next few moments, but Bruce doesn’t even acknowledge it. He just stares down hard at the floor and can’t breathe anymore.

* * *

That was days ago. Bruce doesn’t know how many days, nor does he care. He goes out at night and destroys anyone he can find with so much as a blip on the radar of their moral compass. When he’s exhausted and can’t fight anymore, he pushes himself until he can barely move, and  _ then  _ he goes home.

Well, he goes to his house.

Alfred misses Clark, and he always wants to talk about it. He always pushes Bruce to try and talk about it, too, but Bruce won’t. He doesn’t know what the fuck to say. Clark’s gone; anything Bruce could say or do isn’t going to change that.

Their bed still smells like both of them; Clark’s stupid cheap soap is all rubbed into the sheets, now. Bruce will never be able to get it out. Worse, though, he  _ will;  _ he’ll make the stupid fucking thing smell like him again, and Alfred will wash the sheets, and Clark will be gone. He’ll pick up his clothes from all over the Manor and wash them; he’ll pack up his books and his belongings; he’ll ship whatever his parents want back to them. Soon, Clark will be erased from his life, like he was never even fucking there. No laugh, no thoughts, no  _ body. _ Nothing. Just gone.

Everybody dies. What’s the fucking point?

“I want to see him,” Bruce can hear Diana say, in that very clear and specific way of talking she has. She always seems to mean exactly what she says. Bruce envies her for that; sometimes he doesn’t know how to say something he means, only things that he doesn’t believe at all.

“He’s not well,” Alfred responds. Bruce turns his face into his pillow and almost sighs, but doesn’t. It’s an effort to be normal that he’s not ready to try.

“I do not  _ care  _ if Bruce is well,” Diana says firmly. He can tell she’s going to end up in his bedroom regardless of how this conversation goes, so he drags himself upright and starts mechanically tugging his clothes on. “He is going to want to hear this. I think that Clark—”

Bruce is across the room in two strides and wrenching the door open before he even knows what he’s doing. Diana and Alfred are just outside the door, barely down the hall; they both stare at him, and he’s acutely aware of the bruises on his face and his bare chest, of the fact that he’s only wearing boxer-briefs when Alfred rarely even sees him like this outside of early mornings.

“You think what?” Bruce says. He wants to ask  _ What about Clark?  _ but the name is too much. He can’t tie Clark’s name and face to the way he’s feeling, not yet, not until he’s forced to. Without a body, there’s been no funeral; with no funeral, there’s been random memorials, but none that Bruce has attended. None by people who really matter to Clark.

Mattered.

“The Fortress,” Diana says, voice speeding up the more she talks. She ducks under Alfred’s arm and comes to Bruce, telling him, “The Kryptonian technology he keeps in the Fortress, it is activated by the glow of the yellow sun. Arthur and I went to examine the Fortress to see if there was anything he’d left behind we could use to— Well, and we found this.”

Diana turns her phone to him, bizarrely enough, and there’s a photo inside the Fortress of Solitude on it. Bruce doesn’t ask; he just grabs up the phone and looks close at the picture. Through a milky green haze on the screen, he can see Clark’s face.

“He’s regenerating,” Diana says. “Faster than you will believe.”

“Let’s go,” Bruce tells her. He firmly shuts the door to his bedroom and strides past them so he doesn’t have to look at Clark’s sweater still abandoned under the sunny windowsill in the hallway.

Diana has her jet out on the Wayne property; she waits impatiently for Bruce to get his Batman gear on before ushering him in and taking off. Bruce promises to call Alfred once he knows what's going on.

"But don't get your hopes up," Bruce calls over the roar of the jet engines kicking on. Diana motions him upwards.

"Of course not," Alfred shouts back. He somehow still seems even-toned shouting blue murder like this. "Don't do anything foolish."

Bruce grins, almost-real and the first smile that's been on his face since it all happened, and says, "Alfred, when have I ever?" before pulling himself up and in, next to Diana. She waves to Alfred before zipping up into the sky, the two of them cloaked with the jet.

The jet moves impossibly fast, an enhanced design by the seven of them so Diana could soup up the stupid thing. Bruce is momentarily grateful to his past self for willing to be involved; the jet can get from Gotham to the Fortress with inconceivable speed.

Diana still takes that time to start asking, "So, if you—" which is all she gets out before Bruce stops her. He doesn't say anything; he just looks away and doesn't answer. Diana doesn't push for the time being. Bruce knows, though, that if this doesn't work and they make the return trip home alone, without Clark, he's going to get an earful and he'll be expected to respond.

The Fortress seems cold. It never really has to Bruce before, but it does today. It's all ice and snow, but Clark makes the place seem stupidly homey. Bruce always figured it's just some projection of his personality, but now he's realizing it was just  _ Clark.  _ Clark's presence has always been enough to warm him up and thaw him out. He never even noticed until he had to freeze back over again.

Diana remains mercifully wordless as she lands the jet a healthy distance away and leads Bruce towards the Fortress. He follows, only a few paces behind her, ready to strike if whatever thing wearing Clark's face attacks. Because surely it won't be Clark.

Bruce's heart thrums; he reminds himself  _ it won't be Clark. _

Diana lets them in and runs deeper inside, leaving Bruce to break into a sprint to follow. She shouts, "Arthur, are you still—"

"Yeah, down here," Arthur shouts back, voice echoing. Bruce pivots to follow his voice, leaving Diana behind for a moment before she catches up and gets ahead of him again. Arthur's hauling a body up and out of a writhing mass of gelatin by the time they get there, covered in red jelly-pulp and blood and looking absolutely bewildered.

"He started gasping and inhaling the stupid shit," Arthur explains, trying to manhandle the body down onto the floor carefully. It's writhing, trying to shove away from him and crawl towards Bruce and Diana.

Bruce looks down at it, unseeing for a moment before his mind clears. He kneels down, and the body stops writhing and squirming. It looks back up at Bruce.

Bruce knows him. He  _ knows  _ him. He knows the broad lines of his shoulders, the strong planes of his back, the build of his chest, the skin of his arms. He knows the face that looks up at him. The face that looks up at him knows him, too, and it smiles, all crystal-blue eyes and familiar fucking mouth and Bruce lets himself think,  _ It's Clark. _

"What happened?" Clark asks, voice rasping before he coughs, turning his head to the side and hacking until he gags. He twists up onto his hands and knees and vomits more of the red gelatin. Bruce catches him by the shoulders, keeps him steady until he can breathe again.

"I don't know," Bruce says. His throat hurts, his face  _ aches,  _ so he tears the cowl off and tosses it aside. Clark looks up at him, face shining, eyes bloodshot and barely open. "We have to get him outside."

Arthur helps lift Clark up long enough for Bruce to stand and sling him across his back. He's as heavy as he ever was, but Bruce is stronger than he's ever been, and he hauls Clark out of the Fortress and straight into the unrelenting light of the sun.

It's like watching the sun fucking  _ rise.  _ Clark's color all comes back in a rush, his face blazing pink, his chest going red. He groans, once, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up on shaky hands. Bruce wants to reach out, he  _ wants to,  _ but he's frozen in place, allowing Clark to do this on his own.

When Clark's standing again, Bruce finally remembers protocol. Prove this isn't an imposter. Prove this isn't a trick. Prove this is real.

"Superman," Bruce says, because he can't use Clark's name if this is just somebody using his face. Clark turns to look at him, back straight, shoulders even, finally looking like himself again. He's healthy, and whole, and— and spider-webbed with scarring, all over his fine unmarked skin.

"B," Clark says. Bruce's chest squeezes. His cowl isn't even on; the only people here are Diana and Arthur, both staring at them. Waiting for either an all-clear or a sign from Bruce that something's wrong.

"'She had blue skin and so did he,'" Bruce recites. He can see Diana and Arthur both turn to look directly at him, in his peripheral vision, but he ignores them. This isn't JLA protocol, or even fucking Batman protocol; this is Bruce and Clark and the plan they came up with near two in the morning, once, in case they ever needed to be sure.

And now, thank fucking God, Clark is smiling at him as he says it.

"'He kept it hid and so did she,'" Bruce says. Clark looks at him for a long moment, still naked, still smiling, still shining in the yellow sun and unsullied white snow.

"'They searched for blue their whole life through,'" Clark says. "'Then passed right by and never knew.'" He holds out a hand and says, "Bruce, I'm sorry. I had to."

"You did not  _ have to,"  _ Bruce snaps before colliding with him, holding him tight for a brief moment. Clark holds him even tighter; he won't let him go when Bruce makes to pull back, remembering Diana and Arthur are right there, and Bruce just stops caring altogether.

He tears his gloves off and wrenches his gauntlets apart until his hands are free of the suit, digging into Clark's skin. He's starting to feel warm again, more real. This close-up, Bruce can tell that the scars littered faintly all over him like lightning bolts are places his body surged and stitched back together in regeneration. It's a horrifying thought, so he compartmentalizes it and shoves it away for now.

"Are you in pain?" Bruce asks. He withdraws to press two fingers to Clark's throat. Average Kryptonian vitals are a mystery to him, but Clark's specific vitals are assuredly not, and he feels just as normal and healthy as ever.

"No," Clark tells him. "I wasn't sure this was going to work, to be honest with you. I set it up as a contingency plan but it seemed like a load of hooey."

If nothing else, Clark saying some stupid shit like that is evidence enough that he's the real deal. Bruce finally pulls away to glare at him.

"We do  _ not  _ keep secrets," Bruce growls at him. Now that he's finally let himself accept that this is real, that it's really happening, he's kind of imploding.  _ "You  _ were the one who  _ insisted—" _

"It wasn't so much a secret as it was me not wanting to get your hopes up," Clark tells him. He reaches for Bruce's wrist, circling it with his fingers as he says, "I didn't want you to spend your whole life obsessing over it if it didn't work. You deserve a life after me if it comes to that."

"Shut the fuck up," Bruce says lowly. He's immediately both acutely aware of the fact that Clark is naked, and hyper-cognizant of Diana and Arthur not two yards away when this thing between them (the years-long  _ thing,  _ the thing where Clark basically lives at the Manor and Bruce can't see himself loving anyone else,  _ that  _ thing) is supposed to be secret.

"Don't tell me to shut up," Clark says, affronted. "I sacrificed—"

"Shut," Bruce cuts him off, "up. Shut up. You have put me through  _ hell." _

Clark's brow furrows and he says, "And I'm awfully sorry about that, but you know I had to do it."

He sounds like such a fucking hick. Bruce turns his hand to yank Clark in by the wrist for another tight embrace. This time, neither of them pulls back; after a beat, Arthur whistles.

"Well, bud, you can explain yourself to us later," he says thickly. Bruce turns to look at him just as Arthur looks away, rubbing at his face with the heels of his hands. "Alright, Lady Di, let's go."

"I'd like to ask him a few questions first," Diana says, but Arthur puts a hand on her shoulder and shakes his head. She looks to Clark, face just as tear-stained as Arthur's pretending his isn't. "I will give you two hours."

"Whatever for?" Clark asks. He's got that dumb farmboy grin back on his face. Bruce had thought he'd never see it again.

"Don't you play stupid with me, either of you," Diana warns. She lets Arthur tug her towards the jet as she says, "You're going to have to tell us eventually! You get a pass today because you died, Clark, that's  _ it!" _

"Understood!" Clark calls back with a hand cupped around his mouth. Diana and Arthur take off, Arthur waving, Diana flipping them off, before Clark finally turns back to Bruce. "I really am sorry, you know I would've—"

Bruce cuts him off roughly with a kiss, hand shooting up to cradle the back of Clark's head. His hair is slick with the goop from the Fortress, and he tastes sour with it, but Bruce can't bring it in himself to pull away for a long,  _ long  _ minute.

"I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Bruce says. Clark nods roughly, his eyes flickering between Bruce’s as he tries to get a read on his expression. Bruce wants to make his face purposefully unreadable by instinct, but he forces himself to stay calm. It’s Clark. It’s  _ Clark. _

Bruce remembers, in a blistering flash of pain that rockets through his chest, what it felt like to truly believe he’d never get to see Clark again, to talk to him, to touch him. He smooths his hands down Clark’s chest and leans down again, kissing him roughly, catching him by the hips and the back of his head.

“Is there a fucking shower in this place?” Bruce asks. Clark pulls him by the wrist back into the Fortress, a place that has multiple bathrooms to accommodate Clark and now Bruce, too, which Bruce refuses to acknowledge right now while he’s trying to get a grip.

When Clark’s done scrubbing himself down, looking flushed and raw, Bruce can’t help but drag him back to the bedroom the two of them share when they’re here. There’s still sweaters mixed up together on the floor, shoes lined up by the door. Bruce pushes Clark over the foot of the bed; Clark lets him.

Bruce is almost angry at himself for putting on the entire Batsuit to come out here. It takes him and Clark both working at the fastenings to get him loose. Clark ends up grabbing two ends and tearing just to get to his skin.

“I’m so sorry,” Clark says again, before Bruce seals their mouths together and steals the next apology from his throat. He doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t want to  _ think  _ about it. He just wants to  _ want. _

He pushes Clark back once more, pins his shoulders to the mattress of a bed he only ever uses for this purpose, kisses him again. Clark shucks off the last of his clothes for him, tugging the waistband of his underwear down and off. Bruce kisses him for that, too.

“Hey,” Clark says, quiet. Bruce drops his head to bite hard into his throat. It doesn’t do anything, but he does it anyways to feel the skin between his teeth, his heart racing, blood pumping through his veins. It’s so human and alive that Bruce exhales, slowly, before reaching between them to take their cocks together in his hand. Clark arches up into him, breath punching out of his lungs. Bruce doesn’t have it in him to do anything but drop his head and kiss him.

“Hey yourself,” Bruce says gruffly, tipping Clark’s head back by his chin so he can bite down the column of his throat. He can’t keep his head on straight, lost in a thousand sensations at once; it’s carnival-dizzying, spinning like this when he usually keeps such tight control on himself.

His eyes stay closed as he tucks his face into the juncture of Clark’s shoulder and his neck, dragging down to his chest. His forehead presses hard to the hollow beneath Clark’s throat, hot breath huffing over the strong muscles of his chest beneath as he twists his wrist, slicking his grip with their precum.

“I love you,” Clark says. He always says it that way, unabashed and easy, like it doesn’t mean anything. Like it’s like breathing for him. When Bruce asked, once, Clark said it nearly was; it’s the hurt and the distrust and the hate that always feels so alien to him.

The love’s what’s alien to Bruce, but he still nods, lifting his head again to kiss Clark hard, biting his bottom lip as Clark groans. He cums across both their chests first, and Bruce lifts his head, shifting backwards to get a better grip.

Clark takes full advantage of his shifting movement to knock him backwards, flat on his back with his head at the foot of the bed; before Bruce can even lift his head to look at him, Clark’s swallowing his cock, and it doesn’t take long for him to cum down his throat, overwhelmed and emotional and just on the edge of fully freaking the fuck out.

When Bruce is able to inhale again, Clark’s there, kissing him on the cheek, his chin, his lips. Bruce shoves weakly at him, but Clark just tugs him in closer.

“Bruce,” Clark starts to say, but Bruce shakes his head. He lets Clark tug him in again, tucking his head under his chin, ear over his heart, pounding away in his chest.

“Tomorrow,” Bruce says. “Just— I don’t want to deal with all that right now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“You know, Ma always used to say not to put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today,” Clark says, all Kansas wisdom and farmboy earnesty.

“I’m sure Ma Kent also has a thing or two to say about her son dying on live television,” Bruce says. His throat goes dry just saying it, and Clark blanches, starting to get up.

“Fuck,” he says. “I need to tell everyone. I need to go.”

Bruce hesitates, then sits up, too. “I’m coming.”

“You can—”

“I’m coming,” Bruce repeats, firmly.

Clark smiles and offers him a hand up. Bruce takes it.

**Author's Note:**

> [This book](https://66.media.tumblr.com/55b06e90dd1e0269a5669af4fa8fbf6a/tumblr_nx2mffwx6N1uojw98o1_1280.jpg) is still on a shelf in the bookcase in the old Kent farmhouse.
> 
> You can (and should!) come chat with me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicolelianesolo) and/or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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